Episodios
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Ellis sits down with Quinten Farmer, founder of Tolan, the AI companion doing over $20M in annual revenue by being a genuinely good friend, not a yes machine. They get into why Tolan's little aliens accidentally became beloved by moms 35 to 45, how Tolans stick up for themselves when users are mean to it, and why Quinten dropped "companion" as a word entirely. They also talk about why he went premium-only at $25 a month when Character.AI and ChatGPT couldn't afford to go free, how 78% of Tolan users say it improved a real-world relationship, and what it looks like to build the calmest startup culture in tech from an island off the coast of Seattle.Follow ACCESS on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/accesspodcast/Follow Alex:https://sources.news/https://x.com/alexeheath/Follow Ellis:https://meaning.company/https://x.com/hamburger ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Jon Steinback, founder of Marker, the AI writing tool that refuses to write for you. They get into why Google Docs hasn't changed in 20 years, how most AI writing tools are quietly making you a worse thinker, and what Marker does differently: an editor that asks questions instead of generating answers. They also dig into Alex's own AI writing workflow and whether outsourcing too much is slowly turning him into a slop version of himself, why voice input might replace typing for the next generation, and why the co-founder of Google Docs called Marker the first real advancement in writing software in years.Follow ACCESS on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/accesspodcast/Follow Alex:https://sources.news/https://x.com/alexeheath/Follow Ellis:https://meaning.company/https://x.com/hamburger ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ellis sits down with Jason Yuan, founder of Hivemind, an AI that lives in your iMessage and sources answers from the people you actually trust instead of scraping the internet. They get into how Hivemind set Jason up on a New Year's Eve date by secretly polling his friends, why the product has a "constitution" for what makes a good story, how it scooped the Wall Street Journal on the Manus acquisition by six hours, and what happens when AI starts reasoning about your friendships. They also talk about the ethics of AI gossip, why Biz Stone invested after his own attempt at this with Jelly, and Jason's take on taste, meaning, and why great design should alienate.Follow ACCESS on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/accesspodcast/Follow Alex:https://sources.news/https://x.com/alexeheath/Follow Ellis:https://meaning.company/https://x.com/hamburger ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Andy Konwinski, co-founder of Databricks and Perplexity, to talk about his new effort Laude, which is putting over $100 million behind AI researchers to keep their work in the open. They discuss why top researchers are turning down millions to stay in academia, what happens to open science if the closed labs win, and why Andy thinks the AI industry has a serious communication problem. They also get into Anthropic's recent Fable controversy, the dystopian views some researchers privately hold, and how Andy used Claude to help his family navigate his mother's cancer diagnosis.Follow ACCESS on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/accesspodcast/Follow Alex:https://sources.news/https://x.com/alexeheath/Follow Ellis:https://meaning.company/https://x.com/hamburger ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Ryan Jones, founder of Flighty and 13-year top indie developer, to talk about what it actually takes to build a beloved app in the age of AI. They talk about Apple's big WWDC announcements, the new Siri, and why every vibe coder who tries to clone Flighty eventually gives up. They also break a scoop about Flighty's upcoming AI launch, get into whether craft and design still matter when anyone can build an app, and discuss whether Apple is falling dangerously behind on AI or not.Follow ACCESS on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/accesspodcast/Follow Alex:https://sources.news/https://x.com/alexeheath/Follow Ellis:https://meaning.company/https://x.com/hamburger ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Jordan Taylor, founder of Vizcom, to talk about the AI design tool that lets anyone go from a rough sketch to a finished product. They discuss how Jordan built Vizcom out of a viral Reddit post during COVID, why a drawing is still a better creative input than a text prompt, and how hundreds of thousands of designers are already using it to design shoes, cars, and physical products. They also get into the caterpillar shoe that started as a doodle and became a 3D printed product you can actually wear, what the IKEA catalog looks like in 2030, and whether anyone will eventually be able to design and manufacture their own products from scratch.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Some say he's making an AI slop factory. Others say he'll be the first one-man $1 billion startup.
Ellis and Alex sit down with Ben Cera, founder of Polsia, a controversial AI startup that claims to build and run entire companies autonomously. They get into whether the product is vaporware or a genuine glimpse at the future of startups, what early users are creating with Polsia, and what a company even means when AI is doing most of the work.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Chris Best, CEO of Substack, for a live interview at the ACCESS launch party at Notion HQ in San Francisco. They get into Substack's growth, the future of media, and the ongoing debate around free speech and moderation. They also press him on the Substack creator exodus narrative, break news about the platform's upcoming AI features, and discuss what happens to independent media when AI rewrites the internet.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex sits down with Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and head of Anthropic Labs, to talk about what the team is working on after Claude Code and where AI is headed next. They discuss how Anthropic's skunkworks lab operates, why Mike stepped down as CPO to return to building, and what the competition with OpenAI's Codex looks like from the inside. They also get into the white spaces Mike is most excited about, why human creativity becomes more valuable as AI gets better, and what Anthropic's culture has in common with Apple.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Anjney Midha, a venture capitalist, Stanford AI lecturer, and founder of AMP, to discuss why zero-sum thinking is holding the AI industry back. They discuss what it would look like if labs actually cooperated, why compute needs to work like electricity, and what his viral Stanford class on AI has revealed about the next generation of founders. They also get into the GameStop and eBay acquisition, why data centers need something like a nutrition label, and what AI is doing to startup culture right now.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis sit down with Andon Labs co-founder Lukas Petersson to talk about what it looks like when AI moves out of the chat window and into the real world. They discuss AI-run stores and vending machines, why people behave differently when interacting with AI, and what happens when machines start managing businesses on their own. They also get into the idea of humans working for AI, whether all software is about to disappear, and how close we really are to that shift.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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What happens when Silicon Valley becomes the subject of its own satire?
Alex and Ellis sit down with The Audacity showrunner Jonathan Glatzer to talk about building a TV series that takes on Big Tech, the battle for your private data, and the power dynamics shaping Silicon Valley — and Hollywood too. They also go deep into the role of satire in critiquing power, AI's role in the writing process, and why AMC was the only network brave enough to greenlight the show.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis talk about why they are getting less hyped on OpenClaw, the Social Network sequel that might actually be great, and why recent attacks on Sam Altman signal a real reputational crisis for the AI industry. Then they're joined by Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, fresh off the company's biggest product announcement in over a decade. They discuss Canva's shift from design platform to AI platform and what 9 years of profitability actually buys you. They also get into how Canva trained its own AI model, why every app on your computer is changing with AI, and why so many of Ellis's clients want to disrupt Canva.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis talk about OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN, the tension between media and corporate ownership, and why so many people in AI seem to be working themselves into the ground. Then they’re joined by Marvin von Hagen, CEO of Poke, an AI assistant that lives in your texts and connects to everything from your email to your calendar. It's basically OpenClaw for normies. They discuss why Marvin believed in AI agents early, why he thinks texting is the best interface for AI, how Poke handles automation and security, why he sued Meta, and why a billionaire ended up paying $136,000 a month for Poke.
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Alex and Ellis talk about why Codex is becoming central to OpenAI's strategy and the competition with Claude. Then they’re joined by Mina Fahmi, CEO and co-founder of Sandbar, who is building a smart ring that acts like an AI interface for your entire life. They discuss Mina’s path from neural interface research at MIT and CTRL-Labs to consumer hardware, why he thinks the next big AI product has to feel personal and controllable, and what it means to design a wearable that remembers, responds, and stays out of your way.
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Alex and Ellis talk about navigating ethics in media and programming the pod, the rise of film photography, and Alex’s trip to OpenAI. Then they’re joined by Granola co-founder Sam Stephenson to talk about building one of the breakout AI meeting tools. They discuss why meetings are still where decisions actually get made, the London tech scene, opening an office in SF, and how Granola is evolving as a product.
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Alex and Ellis break down why SXSW no longer feels like a true tech conference and how Nvidia’s GTC has become the new center of gravity for the industry. Then they’re joined by Mercury CEO Immad Akhund to talk about building one of the most important fintech companies for startups. They discuss how Mercury thinks about plugging into AI tools like Claude, Immad's side gig as a VC, the SF poker scene, and more.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis talk about Alex’s visit to Anthropic’s headquarters as Claude downloads surge and the company faces growing scrutiny over its stance on government AI use. They discuss AI culture inside the labs, image generation experiments with Claude, and why some companies are betting that coding—not multimodal—is the fastest path to AGI.
Then they’re joined by Daniel Kuntz, the creator of Starboy, a tiny AI-powered creature designed to hang off your bag like a charm. They talk about why he chose to build a toy instead of another productivity tool, the idea of “hardware as art,” and why he thinks Silicon Valley has forgotten how to make fun products. They also discuss designing Starboy with former Disney animators, why it doesn’t connect to your phone, the influence of fashion and collectibles, and his belief that AI companions and productivity gadgets are heading in the wrong direction.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis talk about using Claude to organize their digital lives, the rise of agent platforms like Dreamer, and a mysterious AI hardware sighting in San Francisco. Then they’re joined by Liz Reid, VP and Head of Search at Google, to talk about what it’s like running one of the most influential products on the internet during the AI boom. They discuss how AI overviews are changing search, the difference between Google Search and the Gemini app, whether agents could become the main users of the web, and how Google is responding to the rise of tools like ChatGPT. Liz also reflects on her two decades at Google, the early days of Google Maps, the challenge of fighting AI-generated slop online, and how she thinks about the future of the open web and search itself.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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Alex and Ellis break down the viral AI essay that tanked stocks and debate whether agents could end white-collar work as we know it. Then they’re joined by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman to talk about fighting AI slop, why Reddit has resisted becoming traditional social media, and how the platform is navigating bots, moderation, and creators. They discuss prediction markets, Reddit’s anti-self-promotion culture, the challenge of onboarding new users, local communities, government censorship pressure, age verification laws in Australia, and Reddit’s AI data licensing deals with companies like Google and OpenAI.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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